The History of China - #274 - Qing 16: A Whole New Frontier

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Across the trackless expanses of the northwestern frontier zones, far beyond the final vestiges of Great Qing sovereignty or protection, independent, oasis trade hubs survive and even thrive across central Asia during the chaos of the 16th & 17th centuries. They and their denizens, though largely cut off from the rest of the wider world, nevertheless serve a vital – though fragile – linkage between east and west. Here, north of the Taklamakan Desert, the Oirat Mongols continue to live much as they have these past several centuries… until a group known as the Dzungars under a rising leader called Batur Hong Taiji will start dreaming bigger: an Albany Plan of Union… with Mongol characteristics… Time Period Covered: ~1680 CE Major Historical Figures: Four Oirat/Dzungar Mongols: Baibagas Khan [r. 1585-1640] Chechen Khan (Ochirtu) [r. 1640~1670] Zaya Pandita [d. 1662] Khara Khula [d. 1634] Batur Hongtaiji [r. 1634-1653] Sengge [r. 1653-1671] Queen Anu of the Khoshuts [~1653-1696] Boshoghtu Khan (Galdan) [1644-1697, r. 1671-97] Other Mongols: Altan Khan of the Golden Horde Jasaku Khan of the Khalkhas Dge-lugs-pa Tibetan Buddhist Sect: The 5th Dalai Lama (Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso] [1617-1682] Great Qing: The Kangxi Emperor (Aisin Gioro Xuanye) [r. 1661-1722] Major Work Cited: Amitai-Preiss, Reuven & David O. Morgan (eds.) The Mongol Empire & its Legacy. Halkovic, Jr., Stephen A. The Mongols of the West. Miyawaki, Junko. “The Chinggisid Principle In Russia” in The Frontier In Russian History, Vol. 19, No. 1/4. Perdue, Peter C. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Taupier, Richard. “Yeke Caaji, the Mongol-Oyirod Great Code of 1640: Innovation In Eurasian State Formation” in Asian Literature and Translation, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 274, A Whole New Frontier.

The question of boundaries is the first to be encountered. From it, all others flow. To draw a boundary around anything is to define, analyze, or reconstruct it. In this case, select, indeed adopt, a philosophy of history. Ferdinand Braudel But not all exclusions are bad, the conventional wisdom of our time will be quick to remind us, and we are all left with the responsibility for deciding where to try to draw circles, with whom, and around what. David A. Hollinger

Last time, we'd largely capped off the Kangxi Emperor's monumental six-decade reign over the Qing Empire, culminating with his death at 68 in 1722. Yet, it behooves us today to take some additional time to more closely examine the social, military, and political processes begun during the Kangxi era and expanded upon thereafter, especially as it relates to the westernmost frontiers of the realm. I refer, of course, to the area of modern northwest China, today known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is the largest provincial-level administrative division within the People's Republic of China, spanning more than 620,000 square miles, although less than 10% of that is deemed suitable for human habitation, and home

to roughly 25 million inhabitants today, which is, for sheer sake of context, about the size of a single tier one city on China's Pacific coast. So, right up top, let me just get this out of the way. If you've somehow made it this far into this show, and still think I'm going to paint a very rosy picture of the region, its people, its interactions with China, and its past, present, and future, all singing, all clapping, all dancing, all smiling, I'm not that guy.

This episode, and the mini-series to follow about this ongoing issue for the next century plus, is going to be no great pay-on to the greatness of the Manchus or the Han Chinese and their stewardship of Xinjiang. It will, in fact, have much to do with that word that gets just about everyone everywhere in a complete tizzy when it's applied to them. The big G word. Genocide. In this case, I'm not referring to the modern cultural genocide being practiced against the resident Uyghurs and their cultural cousins by the paranoia-fueled state apparatus of the PRC from Beijing to Urumqi, but instead the unfiltered, straight-from-the-tap kind of genocide that you really just don't see too terribly much of anymore. The sort of torrents of fire and rivers of blood total conquest that happens when an

autocrat has the ability and propensity to look out at an enemy or unsubjugated people and say, why not just kill them all? The name itself is about as confusing as it also is erroneous. Xinjiang, meaning literally the new frontier, first coined in the course of Qing's military conquests some four centuries ago. It does, however, still serve very much in its traditional role of border frontier zone, or perhaps more commonly or aptly, as a sort of march, defending the soft, creamy underbelly of the Yellow and Yangtze River plains from any potential malfeasance from the Outer West. In modernity, it's rather hard to imagine there being a significant threat arising from the windswept and desiccated steppelins of

Central Asia enough to force China to act decisively against it. But that, as we should all well know by now, was certainly not always the case. So too is the second part of the formal name not exactly accurate. Though the Uyghur peoples have indeed long held sway over the two part of the formal name not exactly accurate. Though the Uyghur peoples have indeed long held sway over the two regions of Xinjiang, Tarim in the south and Djungaria in the north, they are by no means there alone. Other than them, and the significantly more recent influx of Han Chinese colonization in modern times, Xinjiang is likewise home to Tajiks, Hui, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tibetans, Russians, Saibs, and, wait for it, the Mongols. And it will be against these particular Western Mongols,

also known as the Oirat, aka the Dzungars, that the majority of Qing forces will be directed in the century to come. The term autonomous is likewise a cynically erroneous turn of phrase. Even region is not strictly the case, as we've already seen. It's at least two regions, Tarim and Dungaria, three regions, if you also want to separate out the Taklamakan Desert as a third separate region unto itself. More correctly, the region consists of hundreds to thousands of microbiomes, largely or completely disconnected from one another, except through whatever intercourse the shifting seasons might bring, be that in warfare or tradecraft. Let's start by once again

painting a picture of the region we're talking about, the central Eurasian steppes. Rolling hilltops full of grasses and wildflowers, low mountains, biting winds, vengeful winters. I've heard it described as the bottom of the ocean if the water was removed. Perhaps the most appropriate word for it is simply unbounded. Such an ungraspable, untamable nature, both of land and the people who live among it, has perplexed, befuddled, and terrified the peoples of cities and states since time immemorial.

The very environment itself seems to shrug off any attempt to corral or contain its sheer immensity. Central Eurasia, writes Peter C. Perdue, has never coincided neatly with national boundaries. Only under the brief rule of the Mongols was the region into that ill-fitting mold of nationalism or politics as seen from the European perspective then, Perdue stresses, of this zone, which resulted in constant competition by empires, religions, and cultural groups to define and control it. No simple myths of well-bounded space could ever confine it, no imaginary hexagon of France, no sceptered island of England, no manifest destiny stretching between two ocean coasts. The huge flatlands offered no decisive barriers to invaders,

and the mountain ranges left large gaps through which conquerors could pour their troops. The bewildering fluctuations of a multitude of empires, each ruled by different peoples, with different boundaries and institutions, demonstrated the great plasticity of the landscape. End quote. stretches of otherwise largely inhospitable territory, therefore, we should view less through the lens of anachronistic nationalism, as is the tendency, especially among the official histories being forwarded by, for instance, the current regime, but as the expansion of a central Eurasian state that used the massive resources of the Chinese bureaucracy and economy to bring as much of Central Eurasia and the Chinese core under its own rule. That Central Asian state being, of course, the Manchu Qing war machine. Change, it's worth repeating, did occur across Central Asia, just as it did everywhere else. It's just that signs of it were all too easy to miss to casual outside observers.

On the one hand, the uniformity of its ecological zones allowed easy movement from east to west, which especially suited the herding and nomadic peoples which flourished there. On the other hand, the lack of diversity within zones limited possibilities of greater development. The Chinese and other sedentary peoples incorporated diverse agricultural and maritime production areas within their borders, and used the variegated products of the different zones to build up complex civilizations and empires. The Central Eurasian peoples often seem to have repeated the same adaptations to the monotonous environment without change for millennia. Grazing animals, the tent, the mounted warrior, and its mobile but precarious existence

recur in the descriptions of many different peoples of Central Eurasia, all the way back to the Scythians, to the very last of the Mongols. The quote-unquote civilized writers who provide our sources tended to regard the Central Eurasian peoples as universally greedy, primitive, and poor, and identified them almost exclusively as nomads. They ignored the different way of life in the region and neglected its possibilities for technological development.

They quote, allowed the assumed nomad to obscure the living man." End quote. The substantial uniformity of climactic zones from east to west also made it impossible to draw sharp boundaries across the region. Since no obvious divisions marked the end of one culture and the beginning of another, all sorts of travelers and warriors could move back and forth.

The greatest problem with empire builders was to define their stopping point, and once they'd stopped, to make provisions for security along whatever that frontier happened to be. Basic natural features such as rivers, mountains, and settlements did not define well-enclosed spaces, but tended to create centrifugal patterns. As Justin Rettleson writes, quote, The historical focus of the Xinjiang oases was not inward toward each other, but outward, As Justin Ruttleson writes, Empires on the borders shifted constantly across the region because no natural boundaries did or could exist. Yet as much as this vast tract of the world is bounded and defined by its crisscrossing waters, rather than its lands, so too do those waters seem to themselves confound the seemingly necessary preconditions for the growth of a quote-unquote civilized society.

For the most part, the rivers of Central Eurasia flow inward, or into frozen arctic seas. That is to say, they do not link the region to the world around it. The lakes too, though very large, isolated among deserts and high mountains, generally lead nowhere. And as we look across the span of time and geography across Central Asia, we see that the relatively few exceptions to this pattern would more than prove the rule. Just a few of the waterways stemming from Central Asia supported a sort of sociocultural estuary, in which peoples both nomadic and settled could routinely interact. The last of the Mongol empires, that of the Dzungar, came to extensively rely on this very network of relatively small, disconnected river valleys

to sustain significant trading cities such as Kokand and Andijan, all of which flowed back through mountains and rivers ever wilder and unknown, eventually linking the various steppelands together, and even back to the traditional Mongolian heartland along the Harloon River, where the great Genghis Khan is said to have been born and raised. These particular types of city setups, called by Perdue oasis settlements, are sort of what he refers to as perpendicular civilization. Quote, They are settled societies, but very different from those of great agrarian

civilizations, where village populations spread across a broad landscape. The Turkestan oasis towns were independent, self-sufficient units. End quote. Their own small yields of local crops were grown from the meltwater of the nearby Tien Shan mountains. Yet they were themselves, by dint of their own remoteness, forced to rely on yet another type of perpendicular civilization, those of the passing caravan traders, which served as the arterial network linking these oasis communities to one another, as well as with the wider outside world. Life in these oases was stable, but fragile. Self-sufficiency is, after all, just another way of saying there's no help around the corner when the bad times roll in. And roll in they could, and, from time to time, would. Quote,

Prolonged drought dried up the river's sources, forcing valley peoples to move up into the mountains. Drought that killed mountain pastures prompted mountain pastoralists to raid the towns below. Such disturbances of the miniature pastoralist-settled Sembiosis quickly allowed the desert sands to move in. The abandoned cities of Turkestan and Djungaria that litter the desert testify to the vulnerability of the oasis communities to political and ecological change, end quote. Yet, in spite of, and in some cases perhaps, because of their very fragility and rarity these oasis settlements dotted across central eurasia had typically accounted for the primary concentrations of agricultural and commercial wealth all across the vast landscape and thus

served as focal points as potential vassal ally or conquest for any empire of the steppes, nomadic and sedentary alike, with the means to enforce its terms. Oasis cities would, whenever possible, seek to remain on as good of terms with as many empires as it could, but would seek out the primary backing of usually one specific regional imperial power, usually the one geographically closest, and for rather obvious reasons. Through our chosen lens of focus here, China, that has long accounted for Chinese protection and enforcement of such far-flung oasis settlements as Kamul, or as it's known in Chinese, Hami, and Turfan, in what is modern

Xinjiang, especially during former Chinese Golden Ages, such as the height of the Han and the Tang, respectively. Perdue writes that such a periodic reoccupation, or at least reestablishment of tributary relations across time and even regime, quote, reflects the Chinese imperial interest in controlling the region. As a gateway to the steppe far beyond the Great Walls, Turfan was a valuable security resource for expanding Chinese dynasties, end quote.

Beyond the sandstorms of the deadly Taklamakan desert, however, Chinese protection could not be guaranteed at even the best of times. These oasis settlements, therefore, had little choice but to enter into far more tenuous and tumultuous relationships with the ever-shifting panoply of steppe warlords and would-be khans, typically serving for this sort of hegemon lord as as close to an approximation for imperial tax collection terminus and administration center as the city itself could manage, and as the warlord was interested in such minutiae. Hoshou, Beshbalik, and Samarkand are but three of the more prosperous oasis cities of Central Asia beyond the Chinese imperial umbrella, with the

first two becoming principal centers of the Uyghurs, and the latter turned one of the 1400s' most flourishing trade centers globally by none other than Timur. However, as before, the success or failure of these oases were inordinately tied to the fluctuations of their client empire. When the times were good, wealth, goods, and merchants streamed into these oasis bazaars. Yet when the empire inevitably contracted, their lifeblood would again drain out of the oasis settlements, leaving them to the poverty of bare self-sufficiency yet again, or even outright failure and abandonment. From Perdue, quote, We seldom learn the fates of the people who left their oasis homes, but we know that nearly the entire Turfani population sought refuge within Qing borders for several decades in the 18th century.

They were, fortunately, able to return, but other people disappeared into the sands. End quote. It may be something of a shock to some who take at face value the current story about the region from Beijing, a very familiar cry of, it's always been that way since ancient times, which is a dumbing down and flattening of actual histories, both so lazy and personally insulting as to merit special rebuke, that the region, such as we understand it, of Xinjiang is a relatively recent creation. Rather than it simply existing as such since the dawn of time, mysterious, unchanging, and inscrutable,

read as unverifiable, when it comes to the historicity of Xinjiang, we not only have the specific receipts, but they're most often provided by Chinese historians of yesteryear, from prior to the region's most recent flare-up into international news and opprobrium. Xinjiang was so named in the court of the Qing imperial project's great push for conquests during the 18th century, and wouldn't become a fully integrated provincial unit until the late 19th century. Quote, it has no essential geographical unity. As noted earlier, its topography fragments the region. It was a conglomerate of different cultures, ecologies, and peoples, mostly separate and oriented toward their local environments. End quote. Yet this region, at least today, is the center of our story.

The borderlands between the core of China and the farthest nomadic pastures were a zone of frontier interaction, a kind of middle ground where peoples following radically different ways of life adapted to one another and to the environment itself. Because the steppe was filled with people constantly on the move, all those moving through it had to adopt, to at least some extent, the customs of the nomads, those best suited to life in such an unforgiving region. For the Chinese soldiers charged with securing and defending such stretches of borderland, that meant a whole range of lifestyle changes, from dietary, for instance a much more meat- and milk-heavy diet, to best practices and strategies, marching with one's own herd of cattle, for instance, and the tendency to eschew permanent fortifications, long a hallmark of dynastic armies, in favor of mobile tent camps. Cavalry came much

more to the strategic fore, supplanting China's natural strength in infantry numbers, as well as the herding animals of the desert and their specific peccadillos. Few would argue that the temperaments of camels and mules along the Silk Road were significantly less docile and more ornery than the sleepy oxen of the Yangtze rice paddies. Such changes of custom were hardly limited to the military. Lattimore notes that during his trip through Mongolia in 1926-27, that though some 90% of the merchants along the road he encountered were themselves Han Chinese, whom he supposed back at home had all the customary ties and beliefs that most Chinese would, he noted that whilst on caravan, they would tend

to markedly change. Quote, They had cut their links to settled fields, ancestral homelands, and heartland customs. They made offerings to gods of fire and water, not ancestral deities. For clothing, food, and drink, they relied on sheep, not pigs and chickens. End quote. This frontier zone as sociocultural estuary flowed both ways, of course. Just as the Chinese who wandered across it became more accustomed to a far more nomadic life

than their brethren back in Jiangnan or along the Yellow River, so too did the classic steppe riders, that is to say the Mongols, Khitans, Uyghurs, etc., find the region strangely limiting, having to put up with more restricted mobility than they could gain in the broad pasture lands of the steppes. As an inherently liminal space, therefore, it was naturally uncomfortable, alien, and even outright hostile to those who had yet to make the necessary lifestyle accommodations to make it work for them. This process of acculturation, however, was not distributed evenly. While Chinese officials tended to find the Xinjiang estuary hostile, abhorrent, and alien, it was far less essentially strange to those who simply found it a bit snugger than usual. Those like the Mongols and, yes, even the Manchus.

It seems likely that the relative comfort the imperial lords of Great Qing might have had in such an environment, especially versus the completely alien rivers, mountains, and forests of southern China, may have helped play a role in its emperors and officials from Kangxi through Qianlong deciding that the new frontier was exactly where they wanted to project their expansionary power across the 18th century. The other significant imperial power that the steppe peoples of the 16th and 17th centuries would begin interacting with with regularity was that of the Tsarist forces of Russia. Lured ever eastward by the promise of trade with the mysterious Chinese, whom they knew through their Mongol contacts still only as the Cathay or even Kitai,

especially trade in precious furs. As the power of the Ming continued to slip into decline and eventual overthrow across the early 1600s, the Mongol chieftains increasingly found it in their interest to seek out the protection and trade assurances of the Russians instead. These overtures were largely rejected by the Tsar, however, as the Mongolian form of conditional or temporary alliance with a greater party was fundamentally incompatible with the Russians' own understanding of power politics, which stated that surrender needs must be unconditional and permanent. You know, you take the needs of the Tsar and that's that.

Anything else beyond that would be considered an act of rebellion. It's a little bit ironic that the Mongols and the Russians would have this misunderstanding at this juncture because, what was it, three or four hundred years prior, as Subutai and Jeb were gunning their way across the western Asiatic steppe, almost the exact mirrored situation played out time and again, where it was the Mongols with diplomatic emissary after emissary failing to understand exactly what peace meant because to them peace and submission were the same word and don't even get me started again into the sort of punishments meted out by the great khans on those that they deemed traitors yet when the mongols found out that their peace overture had been rebuffed by the russians they well no bonus

points here for guessing what they did. They attacked and raided until the Russians, surprise surprise, started to come around to the idea of maybe trading with these guys after all. Through their step-rider scouts and allies, the Russians learned some key pieces of information about their actual trade target, some of it even based in fact. Perdue writes that, quote, they obtained some valuable, though misleading, information from their Mongol hosts, who told them that the Chinese lived in brick cities, check, on large rivers, check, whose names that they did not know,

check, and that their rulers, the Wanli Emperor, was called Tabai Kankan, which might have been trying to be Da Bogda Khan, so sort of check. According to the Oirats, the Altan Khan and the Chinese share the same language and belief. Clearly, all they knew of Chinese were the Mongols settled near the Ming Dynasty frontier. As was wont to happen, those tribes of the Oirat Mongols close to the rising eagle of Tsarist Russia would come to completely submit to the Rus' demands for fealty and time, while those further southeast, far enough that the Russians and Chinese alike were just distant trade partners rather than notable protectors, continued their own processes of gradual unification under the leadership of the Djungars and others of western

Mongolia. Quote, the Russians entered the Mongolian steppes just as the fragmented tribal heads were beginning to unify themselves under Oirat leadership, and as the Ming dynasty was in decline. Even at this early period, it became clear that Russo-Mongol relations would be tense, because the Mongols refused to submit unconditionally to the Tsar, and the Russians mainly considered Mongolian territory as a waystation to China. Chinese nationalist historiography to the contrary, the Russian Tsar never allied with the Uyghur Jungars against the Chinese state, but despite claims of Russian and Mongolian historians,

their relations were not uniformly harmonious. End quote. The collapse and conquest of the Ming by the Manchu might of Great Qing in the 1630s and 40s proved to be a profitable, though delicate, time for the prospects of a reunified Mongol state, against seemingly all odds. Priddy writes, quote, Altan Khan began a major drive against the Uyroths in the 1580s. When he sent an army searching for their leader, he found no one unified confederation, but instead autonomous princes scattered along the Irtish River, end quote. This incursion, however, served as kind of a rallying cry for many of those disparate tribes to begin the process of unite or die, under the at least nominal auspices of a royal figurehead called Bar-Bagaskhan,

who was, though still mostly constrained by agreements of power-sharing and collective action, was still able to summon some 30,000 Khoshat, 8,000 Derbets, 6, six thousand Choros, four thousand Khoits, and two thousand Torgut warriors under a unified banner to resist the Altan Khan's aggressions against them. Even so, this confederation, such as it was, remained shaky and riven with internal disputes and conflicts that routinely threatened to tear the entire enterprise asunder. Most notably, between Balbaghaz Khan and the leader of the Jungars, a warrior called Kharahullah. Still, somehow, the alliance held. In 1616-17, its ruling council, quote, agreed to establish internal peace and not help those who attacked fellow Oirats,

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to uncover tales of life, great endeavours, and the amazing arc of a mighty kingdom. The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt, and experience a legendary culture. By the early 1620s, both Altan Khan, or better known to the West as the Khan of the Golden Horde, and Harakula were appealing to the Russians for aid in their rivalry. The Tsar, who apparently thought that he was the cleverest lad ever to sit the throne, opted to accept Harakula's offer of submission, yet still refused to intercede on either side of the conflict. It can be with what I only imagined to be a harumph that by 1622, Harahula had given up on the idea and renewed his forces' raids against the Russian holdings

as far to the west as Kuznetsk on the banks of the Triov River. When one of the ruling cabal of Oirat princes died in 1625, all attempts at peacehold resolution were thrown out the window in the course of the bloody internal power grab that followed. Balbagas Khan went to war against his own brother, Shokar, over the division of their deceased brother's inheritance. A lasting peace among the Mongols, it seemed, would remain just a step dream. We'll go ahead and jump at this point over to that other aspect of what had become Mongolian culture by the 1700s, its integral relationship with Buddhism.

As you'll no doubt recall, the Mongols had not started out as disciples of the Buddha, but had centuries or perhaps millennia-long belief in Tangriism, the father god of the blue sky and mother goddess of the black earth. Yet, even by the time of Genghis Khan, and then certainly carried forth and seen advanced by his successors, especially those of the Mongol heartlands of East Central Asia, the highly personal steppe religion had yielded, much as it had with Islam to the west, Orthodox Christianity to the northwest,

and Taoism and Confucianism across Yuan China, to a more established and formalized set of practices and beliefs more native to the region. In this case, that was specifically Tibetan Buddhism. By the 17th century, many of the sons of notable chieftains and khans, including the sons of Balabhagas Khan himself, had committed themselves to study and meditation of the sutras from within the hallowed halls of Tibetan monasteries. One of his adopted sons, named Zaya Pandita, helped strengthen relations between Mongolia and Tibet by joining a Lazen monastery in 1616, where he would remain for 22 years, studying both Buddhism and Tantric arts. Nice. Quote, when he attended the installation of the 17-year-old Dalai Lama in 1635, the Panchen Lama gave him the mission to spread

Buddhist teachings among his Mongol people through translations of Tibetan texts. On his return home in 1639, he first went to Balabagas' sons, Ochir-Chutaiji, who would become the Chechen Khan, but soon received invitations from the other top leaders of the Mongols. He spent nearly every year of his life traveling from one tribe to another, in each place conducting funerary and matrimonial rituals, founding temples, preaching, fasting, and translating Tibetan texts. In 1648, he divided the Todobichig, or Clear Script, a variant of Mongolian script designed specially for the Western Mongolian dialect. During his life, he translated over 177 valuable Tibetan Buddhist texts into Mongolian.

In 1650, on one trip to Tibet, he brought 110,000 tails of silver, which he donated for the production of statues and gave in support of the Tashalumpo Monastery. He also asked the Dalai Lama his opinion of the new Qing Emperor. End quote. As a result of his near-universal respect and acclaim amongst the Oirat peoples, the monk Zaya Padida would ultimately emerge as one of the key mediators between the left and right wings of the Oirats, as demonstrated after 1657 when he served as the chief mediators between the left and right wings of the Oirats, as demonstrated after 1657,

when he served as the chief mediator between two such factions that, as ever, found some reason to declare war on one another, ultimately resulting in their peaceful reunification in 1660 under Zaya's own auspices of invoking Chulgan, or a large assembly. When he died on his return to Tibet in 1662, his disciples brought his ashes back to Lhasa, where he was honored by both the Red Hat and Yellow Hat Lamas, and the Dalai Lamas had a

large silver statue made of him. By tirelessly preaching not only Buddhism, but the common bonds of the Mongols both to one another as blood kin, but also to the Buddhist church writ large, Zaya Pandita stands as one of the chief causes of the success of Mongol unification and state-building in the 17th century and beyond. In fact, to this day, Oirat children across Xinjiang are taught in Toto clear script alongside classical Mongolian and other written forms. Although, to be fair, that to-this-day claim is about two decades old, so who knows anymore. It is widely agreed upon that the Oirat chieftain Harahula died in or around the year 1635, thus passing his mantle down to his son and heir,

Batur Hongtaiji, to declare himself both the sole leader of the Oirats and, eventually, the founder of the Jungar Khanate. And I'll pause here to briefly note the not-coincidental titular similarity between Batur's title as Hong Taiji, meaning crown prince or second to the Khan, and that of his Manchu contemporary, Hong Taiji. It was a comparison that Batur himself has noted as making, though the Manchus did not share the Mongolian aversion to claiming the supreme title of Khan outside of bloodline propriety. Nonetheless, some scholars contest this timeline of events, such as Junko Miyawaki, who argues that, as only the patrilineal descendants of the Imperial House

of Borjigin could claim the mantle of the great Khans of the Mongols, calling Batur, as such, is about two generations premature, with the unification of the Jungars under his kaiyan only actually happening in 1678, upon Galdan receiving the title of Boshuktu Khan from none other than the Dalai Lama himself, after killing his rival and father-in-law, Ochertu Chechen Khan. I keep saying Mongol intra-family slash clan rivalries be crazy, but we will unpack that whole situation a bit more in just a little bit. For his own part, Karahula never made the mistake of thinking that his own position as effectively Prince Regent of the Oirats would ever command as much stability or deference as that of the full title of Khan.

But there were steps that he could take to reduce any rocking of his newly refloated ship of state. For one, circumstances favored his rise. With the vast majority of his newly refloated ship of state. For one, circumstances favored his rise, with the vast majority of his potential rivals, such as the Kazakhs, the Altan Khan, and the Turgots, choosing exit from the region over direct conflict. Unable to compel their return to his fold, he instead spent considerable time and energy attempting to rekindle diplomatic relations between his nascent state and that of Russia, after some decade and a half of it being allowed to wither on the vine. He would send 33 emissaries in total to Moscow during his reign,

and received 19 in return via the Siberian transits. Moreover, he arranged for the safe return of Cossack war captives to the Russians, thus elevating his own position in the eyes of the Tsar as a steplord equal to that of the Altan Khan. Quote, two major sources of conflict were at least temporarily resolved, the access to the salt sources and the allegiance of the Kyrgyz. Rivalry over the Kyrgyz tribes living on the Yenisey River grew in 1641 when Batur claimed the right to collect tribute from them, rejecting the claims of the Voivoda of Tobolsk likewise to collect tribute. End quote.

Open war between Russian forces and those of the Dzungars seemed inevitable, save for the implementation of an ingenious device, a little something called dual citizenship. The Kyrgyz, it was finally agreed, could be subjects of both the Russian

Voivode and the Dzungars at the same time, man. It's win-win cooperation at its finest. For everyone, it must be noted, except the poor Kyrgyz themselves, who suddenly found themselves subject to, that's right, double taxation. At the same time, Matur was allowed to expand duty-free trade in Tobolsk, Tyumen, and especially Tomsk. A separate quarter of Tobolsk grew up called the Tatar Settlement. Trade was mostly conducted under the name of diplomatic gift-giving, in which the Jengars exchanged their horses, cattle, sheepskins, and furs for handicrafts made of cloth, leather, silk, silver, walrus ivory, and metal. As this new global trade alignment asserted itself,

notably via the so-called Merchants of Bukhara coming from Turkestan, the Russians soon came to realize that any route to China would have to traverse Mongol-held territories, and as such, it was actually in their best interest to play ball with the steppe riders. For his part, as leader of the Djungar, Batur wasted no time in flexing his might in order to bring more trade, agriculture, and even population into his orbit

in order to further build the power of his nascent state. In 1638, that meant successfully lobbying the Voivode of Siberia to give his people pigs and chickens to raise in Batur's newly conquered regions of Turkestan. The following year, that request became firearms, ammunition, and armor for his troops. Justifiably wary of the potential consequences of arming and upgrading, you know, the Mongols, the Voevoda told Batur that such a request was impossible and then kicked it over to Moscow. In 1650, Batur sent a missive to the governor of Tobolsk

demanding greater gifts, presumably including armed shipments, in order to ensure continued friendly relations, which, yes, sounds exactly like a mafia street corner protection racket. It's a real nice province you got there. It'd sure be a shame if anything bad

happened to it. To each of these requests, both the local and imperial governments of Russia agreed to most of the Djungars' civil requests, such as pigs and poultry, while refusing to grant their more militaristic demands in a policy of quote, consistently avoiding the promotion of arms flow to Mongolia, end quote. Another important step in state building, as all state builders know, would be the establishment of the Djungar capital. This, Batur oversaw from 1636 to 1638 with the founding of Kubakzar, nestled between the banks of the Irtysh River and the shores of Lake Yamish, and consisting of a stone fortress, a monastery, and at first, some 300 residents. Russian emissaries reported that Chinese and Mongol artisans built it of stone, with walls 100 meters around, 6 meters high.

Chinese, Mongols, Bukharins, and Lamas lived in separate districts. Basar had Turkestani peasants brought in to cultivate the fields. Fortresses surrounded the capital, containing four cannon brought from China. End quote. As for the Prince Regent Hong Taiji himself, as it was how he was most comfortable, Bator set his own tent and pasturage a week's ride away from the city and visited only occasionally.

Over the course of the following four years, he would establish several other towns. Like Hans before him, Bator was forming an embryonic basis for what might have been a permanently settled state. Sadly, this dream would follow him to the grave, as would his capital and its network of small surrounding villages. Today, not even the ruins of Kubak Tsar stand to mark its place. The year 1640 would mark a special year for the various Mongol clans and hordes,

the calling of a Great Assembly, or Huraltai. As was tradition, such gatherings were held in order to secure a vote on the most important questions or decisions facing the Mongol peoples, such as whether they should unite and accept subordination under a great Khan or not. As with many instances before, representatives from each of the major tribes and principalities were invited, along with their retinues, to a predetermined site on the steppes to enjoy feasting, sport, dance, in between the important state craft of the day. Word was sent to the Kalka, the Kokonor, the Volga Malmiks, and all other branches

of Mongol lineage to arrive by a certain date in order to take part. In addition, special invitation and request was sent to the Tibetan monastery at Targbagh Thai to send its own envoys to oversee and, in a sense, consecrate the proceedings. The only major Mongol group left out of this invitation, such as it was, were the Chahars, who had already subjugated themselves and bent the knee to Manchurian overlordship. In this case, in the course of this Kurltheim, though there was no overwhelming singular force of being like a Temujin to subjugate all to his will, there was a consensus reached among the myriad princes and khans that, though they were yet unwilling to unite under any single banner, they were open to at least the idea of a lucish confederation of mutual defense pacts. Quote, the assembly agreed

on a code which aimed to regulate disputes, unite the Mongols against outside threats, and increase the powers of Khans and princes. Attacks by one tribe against another would be punished by fines. Tribes would aid one another against outside attack, and each prince would protect his own pastures and return fugitives from other tribes who fled to him for protection. I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Yes. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting. Yes, I see.

By a civil majority in the case of... Owing to the service of the monks who had taken part, Tibetan Buddhism was also declared the official church of the Mongols. The Curl Thai of 1640 thus accomplished a great deal, though some of its particulars remain cloudy. For instance, who really oversaw the proceedings? That is, who should get the credit?

Traditionally, the lion's share has been given by chroniclers to Bhattar Hongtaji and Zaya Pandita. Dissenting scholarship, however, demonstrates that the real power backing the formation and direction of the Great Assembly was the as-yet-not-introduced Jasaku Khan of the Kalkas, in whose territory the meeting was held rather than Oirat lands. It was Jasaku's Kalkas, after all, who faced the most immediate threat from the rising power of the Manchus to the northeast. The warning of Jasaku Khan would

prove to be both highly prescient in its risk assessment and Cassandra-esque in its sheer futility. Even as late as 1640, the Manchus were regarded as a regional power, but hardly one dangerous enough to justify, much less require, some grand unification of the tribes against them. And by the time that balance of power changed quite suddenly and dramatically, mid-decade, the Oirat Mongols, lacking any agreed-upon cohesion or inter-tribal dispute resolution system actually put into place, had themselves descended into yet another round of self-weakening internecine conflict. By the time that was resolved, a decade later, both the Kalkas and

the Koshuts had already independently decided to vassalize themselves to the now newly formed but very much all-powerful Qing state. With Baotou blocked from accession to Khanhood by dint of his bloodline, his dream of state formation to stand in defense against Manchu or Chinese encroachment ultimately died with him in 1653. Though he left a multitude of sons, nine in all, that, as it so often does, proved to be as much of a problem as it ever had, given unclear lines of succession. Bhattarahang Taiji's carefully stitched-together state would be torn apart in the fratricidal

squabbles that would follow. This dark period would only be resolved with the return of Galdan, one of Bhattar's youngest sons, who'd been sent to a Tibetan monastery to learn all he could from its monk's Buddhist teachings when he was only two, eventually to become a full lama, including such subjects beyond the strictly esoteric as astrology, astronomy, philosophy, basic medicine, and even pharmacology, in time marking him out as one of the best educated leaders in Mongolian history. From his distant monastic posting, Gadan lent his support to his brother Senge Hong Taiji's claims and attempts to rein in his other brother's royal ambitions. Hardly surprising, given that he and Senge were the only two sons of Bacher who were full brothers, and, critically, their shared Khoshut princess mother claimed descent from the Borjigin imperial house via Genghis Khan's brother, Joji Hasar. Nevertheless, in time, one of their murderous schemes struck home,

and in 1670, a palace coup at the behest of his brothers Tsetzen and Sodbakbatsar resulted in the prince regent's demise. Senge's widow, Anudara, rendered both as Lady and Queen Anu, however, was able to flee, which she did directly to Galdan's monastery. Upon learning of this bloody brotherly betrayal, Galdan, then 25 or 26, immediately quit his position as Buddhist Lama and made directly for the Irtish Valley for that far more traditional of step practices,

revenge. Another traditional step practice that he would keep, that the wife of the former chieftain would wed his successor. Anu, after all, had made her own choice known with her flight to Galdan, who would indeed take Anu as his queen consort. Lady Anu, briefly, was both a granddaughter of Ochirtu Chechen Khan of the Koshuts, so of the same matrilineal clan as their mother,

another typical choice among the lords of the steppes. So it might sound like I'm throwing a lot of women and lineages at you all at once, certainly more so than we're used to among, say, Chinese succession discussions. But such blood ties, even through female means, were vastly more important to a Mongol succession. As Botter himself had learned the hard way, there was very much a glass ceiling between being able to claim the title of Hong Taiji versus that of Khan itself. All this so that it makes sense when I say that, upon departing his monastery back for the steppes, Galdan, his new princess bride, and from all quarters the loyalist forces of his murdered

brother Senge joined and marched to Dzungaria, where they overthrew his usurper half-brother and installed Galdan as their leader and true successor to Senge. At that point, he had his ducks nicely in a row. Initially, he took up his late brother and father's title of Hong Taiji, which was granted him by none other than the fifth Dalai Lama. With his mother's blood ties to the line of Khans supplemented by both his brothers and now his own wife with the same lineage as granddaughter of the still-living Ochertu Khan of the Khoshud, Galdan had managed to cobble together a passable claim to Khanhood. Now, to any of you arching eyebrows out there

as to the absolute legitimacy of this sort of somewhat creative lineage building? Historian Junko Miyawaki explains that, over the course of four-ish centuries, most of which was hard living on the steppes with very little in the way of effective or authoritative record-keeping, certain allowances were to be expected. In the case of the Koshutsu themselves, supposedly the only family line that could trace itself all the way back to the Borge the case of the Koshuts themselves, supposedly the only family line that could trace itself all the way back to the Borgians of the 13th century, even that claim was something approaching making an educated wish. She writes, quote, Yet older princely genealogies of the Khorchin Mongols, a tribe universally acknowledged as rightful heirs of Jyoti Hasar, make no reference

to the Koshuts as a branch of their tribe. The most important question was whether or not one was believed by the people to be related to Genghis Khan by blood, rather than whether one in fact did so or not. The Uyghurats now saw themselves as the last heirs of the Mongol Empire to resist Manchu domination and remain independent. As such, they needed their own Khan in order to best contend against this, last heirs of the Mongol Empire to resist Manchu domination and remain independent. As such, they needed their own Khan in order to best contend against this, as well as any other threats from their increasingly state-organized neighbors further west, still controlled by the scions of Genghis. In this wish-crafting, at least, they were also supported by the Dalai Lama's own Gelugpa regime out of Tibet. These claims would sit and simmer for about five years,

until in 1675, Galdan Hong Taiji had a little bit of a falling out with Ocho Tu Khan, who we will remember briefly is his father-in-law. Galdan would subsequently conduct a successful campaign against Ocho Tu Khan's forces at Kokonor, again with the blessing of the Dalai Lama, and took the Khan prisoner in the winter of 1676. Ochetu would die in captivity at Borotal sometime between 1677 and 1680. As the now uncontested leader of all Oirat Mongols, Galdan's supreme leadership was confirmed once again by the holiest of holies,

with the Dalai Lama conferring upon Galdan the title Bstanziz Bogshogtu Khan, variously shortened to either Bogshogtu Khan or Galdan Khan, meaning the Khan of Heavenly Destiny. And that is where we will leave it today. We'll take up again with the newly enthroned Galdan Khan next episode, as his very rise to power would set off ripples that would, in due time

put both him and the Jungar Mongols as a whole firmly in the sights of the Kangxi Emperor of Great Qing who by the 1670s, you'll recall, was just finishing off the final touches of his own state-building mega-project with the consolidation of his personal rule over all of China

Who then is this upstart Mongol chieftain who keeps destabilizing the western mega-project with the consolidation of his personal rule over all of China. Who then is this upstart Mongol chieftain who keeps destabilizing the western frontiers and sending waves of Olor refugees fleeing from his conquests, through the passes that were supposed to be keeping them out, and into Qing territories to raid, kill, and pillage good, innocent, taxable subject populations? No, this would not do, not one little bit. This Galdan Khan and his Jungar Khanate would need to be punished and brought to heel, no matter how long or in how brutal a fashion that might come to pass. This titanic showdown, ranging all across the western step-marches of North Central Asia,

from Ordos in Outer Mongolia to Gansu and Gobi, all the way to Qinghai, Tibet, Tarim, and Djungaria itself, would be the spark that would touch off a conflict that would rage on for more than 70 years, and in time, see the utter unmaking of the Djungar Mongols as a people, to the tune of emptying the region out of as much as 80% of its previously estimated population, all at the express directives of Kangxi's own incredibly long-lived grandson, the Qianlong Emperor. Thanks for listening. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of

Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.